Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter gets nod for Star Wars: Episode VII

Michael Arndt, who also wrote Toy Story 3, has been giving Star Wars talks.

Lucasfilm confirmed the rumors: Michael Arndt, the award-winning screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3 has been given the green light to write the script for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII film. The new movie has just entered pre-production and is slated to be released in 2015. It was announced just last month as Disney acquired Lucasfilm. There has not yet been word on what the major plot points of the new chapter will entail.

Screenwriter Michael Arndt

IMDB

However, Vulture reports that “the studio’s brass want to bring back the three central characters of the original Star Wars: a much older Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo. No deals are in place with any of the original actors, though our source did say it had high ambition to sign up Mark Hamill, and EW recently reported that Harrison Ford was open to the idea of returning.”

Vulture also noted that for the last few years Arndt has been giving talks and lectures on the art of storytelling through Star Wars: “In the comments section of a discussion about a Star Wars talk Arndt gave at the Austin Film Festival in 2010, one attendee of the seminar notes, ‘Arndt stated that if a writer could resolve the story's arcs (internal, external, philosophical) immediately after the Moment of Despair at the climax, he or she would deliver the Insanely Great Ending and put the audience in a euphoric state. The faster it could happen, the better. By [Arndt’s] reckoning, George Lucas hit those three marks at the climax of Star Wars within a space of 22 seconds.’”

Given the variety of opinion the film announcement itself brought about, how do you feel about Arndt as a lead scribe? Share your thoughts below.

Promoted Comments

Nothing he's done screams Star Wars. Who did this guy blow to get this huge title? I can smell the disaster looming already and that was quick. Make it a quick and painless death please Disney.

Yeah, it's not like he won an Oscar for writing, nor was nominated for a second (which was also the highest grossing film of 2010).

I think one of the big problems in film is a tendency to get people who are pigeon-holed into a role rather than taking someone who is just damn good. Going by Toy Story 3, a sequel I expected to reflect a franchise beginning to get milked, he is a damn good writer. Getting someone overly embedded in sci-fi geekery would make for a terrible film in my mind.

Nothing he's done screams Star Wars. Who did this guy blow to get this huge title? I can smell the disaster looming already and that was quick. Make it a quick and painless death please Disney.

Yeah, it's not like he won an Oscar for writing, nor was nominated for a second (which was also the highest grossing film of 2010).

I think one of the big problems in film is a tendency to get people who are pigeon-holed into a role rather than taking someone who is just damn good. Going by Toy Story 3, a sequel I expected to reflect a franchise beginning to get milked, he is a damn good writer. Getting someone overly embedded in sci-fi geekery would make for a terrible film in my mind.

I for one would like to see some of the original cast in it. The actors in episodes 1-3 were cheesy and not in a cool way. Don't know if they can pull it off like they did with 4-6 but if they're gonna do it that's what I'd like to see, some of the original cast.

Hope they give it time to breathe and sort out issues with story. I would forgo the old actors, go with some fresh ones, some solid one that aren't very famous but good actors. Don't put too much plot and don't make the CGI the main focus.

Empire Strikes Back was apparently the one Lucas had the least input on production, screenwriters got to shine, and that happens to be my favorite of the lot. Then Return of the Jedi presaged the abomination I through III were, at least the main roles were fleshed out and endearing and Lucas couldn't quite sink it with ewoks and other ridiculousness. So long this screenwriter is not given a laundry list of must haves, it most likely won't be worse than what Lucas in his big boss years did. Who in his right mind would have made the main characters in I through III so austere and boring only to throw in infantile sidekicks. Han Solo really tied the drama and fun in one neat package, he was the lynchpin that made the other characters shine.

Ok once again he did not write Toy Story 3. A group of 3 writers wrote it and I am fairly certain they had the idea it would be made a movie at the time. He then took what they wrote and made a screenplay from it.

Ok once again he did not write Toy Story 3. A group of 3 writers wrote it and I am fairly certain they had the idea it would be made a movie at the time. He then took what they wrote and made a screenplay from it.

Disney has miramax hopefully they will kick over the movie to them and then clean up on episode seven rides at the parks. That said if I see any hidden mickeys I'm going to be pist. http://www.hiddenmickeyguy.com/

Writing comedy that works is one of the hardest things to do. Pulling back and writing drama/space operas will be a cake walk.

This will be a huge disaster. Has anyone see Mark Hamill or Harrison Ford lately? I can't imagine then as Luke or Han anymore. They might as well move on from the original series and do something new because this will definitely not end well for the franchise as it is now.

Maybe this will end up as one of those things so hideously bad, that it achieves cult status.

I hated Little Miss Sunshine so I have little hope for this writer, and more generally I think it is a mistake to do an episode 7 with any writer, but everyone saying they won't go and see it will, for the most part, because it's still star wars.

The prequels could have been so much more... I'd just assume they reboot those like they do with the spiderman trilogies every 10 years now.

This only thing that's mildly worrisome is wanting to get the old actors in. They'd be better off doing this LOTR-style and do the principle filming all at once in case any of them bites it. I doubt they will, but you just never know, and it's better to be safe than do awkward re-writes/re-casting.

You'd have to try pretty hard to find a screen writer worse than George Lucas. The first three screen plays were written by Lucas' ex-wife. As I understand it, she was not a luminary in the field. She was however "Not George Lucas" which is why the first three movies were so much better than the last three. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of quality we can get out of the series with someone who is actually a good screen writer instead of just being okay but better than George.

You'd have to try pretty hard to find a screen writer worse than George Lucas. The first three screen plays were written by Lucas' ex-wife. As I understand it, she was not a luminary in the field. She was however "Not George Lucas" which is why the first three movies were so much better than the last three. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of quality we can get out of the series with someone who is actually a good screen writer instead of just being okay but better than George.

Marcia Lucas was the editor on the first three Star Wars films. She didn't write any of them.

Lucas was the sole screenwriter on A New Hope and had collaborators for Empire Strikes Back (Leigh Brackett & Lawrence Kasdan) and Return of the Jedi (Lawrence Kasdan).

You'd have to try pretty hard to find a screen writer worse than George Lucas. The first three screen plays were written by Lucas' ex-wife. As I understand it, she was not a luminary in the field. She was however "Not George Lucas" which is why the first three movies were so much better than the last three. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of quality we can get out of the series with someone who is actually a good screen writer instead of just being okay but better than George.

She was actually the editor, and really only had significant impact on the first one. That was back when GL was a nobody, so he listened to her.

For ESB he was hands-off because he had this idea of turning SW into a long-running movie series with others doing the writing, directing, etc. while he was off doing interesting new things. He didn't like how that one turned out, so he clamped down on RotJ. I believe she was also an editor on that one, but by then he was ignoring everyone's input.

You're absolutely right - the quality of every Star Wars movie has been directly proportional to how many people had high-level creative input. George had some good ideas, but also some really big blind spots. Hence the clusterf*ck that was the prequel trilogy.

Pretty interesting details on Marcia Lucas here. The same site has several other good articles - I'm pretty sure that's where I read about GL's handling of ESB.

I'm excited. I was expecting Toy Story 3 to be just okay, and I nearly bawled in the theater when ***Spoiler Alert*** the garbage dump scene, and then I DID have tears (though holding back immensely) during the last scene. I'm not saying this guy was responsible for those moments of course, but I would love to have his take on Star Wars. Changing who runs the ship can really help the quality, I think. Star Trek benefited from outside writers, and although the most recent movie split fans I was one who thought it was at least new and exciting territory. Recently the Mission Impossible series became better with different talent put in charge of production. Change can be good, and I look forward to what changes are brought to this series.

I don't know about you folks but I have a HUGE phobia to having very high-profile individuals hired to make nerd-ish flicks.

And my skin crawls when the first thing they say is: My kids/grandkids begged me to accept it.

I'm giving the sequels the benefit of the doubt but knowing Disney at best we can expect a decent (not superb) plot mixed with the intent to sell as many toys as they can possibly can advertise in the films.

Why are so many worried Star Wars will be ruined? Episodes I, II and III have already ruined it. FYI Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3 blow any of those latest Star Wars movies out of the water.

I agree. Both Little Miss Sunshine and TS3 had great story, both are films where I'd remember the story long after watching. Maybe the new film will provide a dept to the characters never before seen in a Star Wars film, assuming the big brass didn't screw around with it, which I am sure they would :-/

He's a fine writer but the biggest question really is, does he understand the genre. how much canon is he going to break (because he will)? What he's done and what he's about to do are really quite different things.

It's like getting an award winning graphic designer to do the interior design of a heritage building. Just because he is a "designer" does not make him the right kind of designer for the task. There are basic considerations that are the same or similar but beyond those, understanding of the site, building, space, methodology, use case (& tons of other things) are completely different from what he normally considers for his role as a designer.

And indeed, there has been a hotel project of a heritage building where they, instead of using architects and interior designers, used celebrated graphic designers to do the interior. It looks and feels like a graphic design project upsized to fill the spaces. Even ikea showrooms have more nuanced, livable spaces set up than this hotel.

Some may say it is avante Garde but as a designer and artist myself, I call it disrespect to the space and the heritage. The designers clearly know their stuff, just not for this *type* of design.